TY - JOUR
T1 - Oxidation of asphaltenes adsorbed onto NiO nanoparticles
AU - Abu Tarboush, Belal J.
AU - Husein, Maen M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In Situ Energy (AICISE) for the financial support, and Dr. Azfar Hassan for helping in running the TGA instrument.
PY - 2012/11/28
Y1 - 2012/11/28
N2 - Differential thermogravimetry (DTG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) plots help identifying reaction zones and enable activation energy calculations. Recently, Nassar et al. [1,2] reported major shifts in the DTG combustion peaks and reaction zones between virgin and adsorbed asphaltenes onto commercial metal oxide nanoparticles. They attributed the accompanying reduction in activation energy to a significant catalytic role played by the nanoparticles, especially for NiO nanoparticles. It should be noted that in these experiments only monolayer adsorption from toluene model solutions was encountered. More recently, our group reported multilayer adsorption of asphaltenes from heavy oils onto in situ prepared and commercial NiO nanoparticles [3]. Contrary to the previous literature, the thermal behavior of these asphaltenes revealed a surface role entailing an enhanced exposure of adsorbed asphaltenes to the oxidant stream. In this work, we critically re-evaluated the claim of catalytic effect of nanoparticles [1,2,4,5] and provide an experimental protocol which demonstrates a surface effect.
AB - Differential thermogravimetry (DTG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) plots help identifying reaction zones and enable activation energy calculations. Recently, Nassar et al. [1,2] reported major shifts in the DTG combustion peaks and reaction zones between virgin and adsorbed asphaltenes onto commercial metal oxide nanoparticles. They attributed the accompanying reduction in activation energy to a significant catalytic role played by the nanoparticles, especially for NiO nanoparticles. It should be noted that in these experiments only monolayer adsorption from toluene model solutions was encountered. More recently, our group reported multilayer adsorption of asphaltenes from heavy oils onto in situ prepared and commercial NiO nanoparticles [3]. Contrary to the previous literature, the thermal behavior of these asphaltenes revealed a surface role entailing an enhanced exposure of adsorbed asphaltenes to the oxidant stream. In this work, we critically re-evaluated the claim of catalytic effect of nanoparticles [1,2,4,5] and provide an experimental protocol which demonstrates a surface effect.
KW - Activation energy
KW - Asphaltenes
KW - Heavy oil
KW - Nanoparticle
KW - NiO
KW - Oxidation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.apcata.2012.08.019
DO - 10.1016/j.apcata.2012.08.019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84870336474
SN - 0926-860X
VL - 445-446
SP - 166
EP - 171
JO - Applied Catalysis A: General
JF - Applied Catalysis A: General
ER -